AV Magazine: Secret Cinema’s spectacular production of Grease at Evolution London has showcased Sennheiser’s Spectera in one of the wideband wireless system’s first major deployments.
The immersive theatrical experience in Battersea Park proved to be the perfect testing ground for Spectera, which was launched last year.
3 comments:
I was super excited to read about how they turned this production of Grease into an immersive and fully interactive production. I love it when theater is taken beyond the walls of a space and takes it out of the world, and it takes risks and puts the theater into our world instead of us entering the show's world. The pictures from this production are outstanding and out of this world. One of the pictures shows Danny Zuko flying over the audience spotlighted during his solo song “Sandy”. In this article, they talk about how hard and how big of challenge it was going to be for the sound designer to get everyone to hear the music and for the audience to hear all of the actors throughout all the different stages and acting spaces. I am also surprised to hear that they are running very smoothly, and they are prepared for the show to run long.
As a long time fan of Grease, I found this article really interesting! Additionally, immersive theatre is my favorite type of theatre. I can tell that lots of thought was put into creating this audio system. Transmitting 40 microphone and 10 in ear monitor mixes across a 6250 square meter venue is such a massive undertaking. Also, you have to factor in all of the audience members that are in the playing space. The fact that this was the first time that this technology has been used is really impressive too! If I were setting up and maintaining this system I would be nervous about the longevity of it. However, it sounds like the system has held up great after weeks of performances. Immersive theatre is so cool, because it physically puts the audience into the world and that immersion would not have been possible without this amazing audio system.
It has probably been stated a million times over by now that I am obsessed with immersive theater. This is true, while this is true though, I am interested in the specific trend of so many musicals that are already so popular becoming these immersive experiences to attract more audiences. While I am absolutely obsessed with creating the new, it is repeated throughout the article that there is a great deal of innovation within the technical theater elements and the performance itself that is just so interesting. I guess I hadn’t taken into consideration just how much work goes into changing and unlearning the basic foundations of a show that is so classic to most people that have worked in the scene. I’m sure that there are new things that they are learning with each performance too, things to re work, timing with the audiences and how that effects things, etc. Truthfully though, this has had me thinking differently about the work that goes into adapting these shows.
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